Easy love - The road more travelled
by TheOneTrueBear
Summary: Divergence of my story Easy Love which after chapter 4 veers away from cannon. This one weaves around TVD season 4. Caroline makes a choice in the forest with Klaus in Tyler's body that changes everything between them.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N hello anyone who is reading my story easy love, or anyone to whom these first chapters look very familiar, this is what's going on. Got 4 chaps in to easy love and had two story line possibilities. the one i followed in easy love which veers away from canon and the one i follow here weaved around canon. If you've read easy love you can go straight to chapter 5 where the stories diverge**

 **Easy Love**

"Easy love" Tyler puts maddening distance between their burning bodies. "Wrong time, wrong place" his eyes flash downward. "Wrong equipment"

He's saying wrong but she's not listening because nothing, and she means seriously nothing, has ever felt so right. The adrenaline from her rescue is still pumping in her veins and the relief that he is alive makes her giddy with a brilliant bubbling joy. And underneath all that she is lost to a carnal desire the like of which she's never felt.

Every touch and kiss feels different, new like the first time, and its mind-blowingly erotic. His hands, always sure, seem more commanding than ever and his kisses take possession of her with a new assurance. Whatever he has been through has empowered him to the point where she can barely recognise the familiar feel of his muscular body.

She pulls off her cardigan ignoring his reservations. "You're miraculously alive," she insists. "We're fugitives on the run. All signs point to hot vampire hybrid sex."

His hands tangle in her hair as she presses him up against the tree behind them and yes it does all feel different. His kisses, the way he tilts her head with his hands is confident and controlling but his lips are worshipful and yielding. It's amazing and she has to have more.

Stepping back she strips off her top and he takes in her full breasts as if it's the first time he's laid eyes on them and his darkening lust makes her body thrum with the feeling that no one, hot even he himself, has ever wanted her, exclusively and only her, more than he does right now.

She dives back into his unfamiliar kisses and suddenly her lust-addled mind catches up and all the pieces snap brutally into place. "Did you just call me love?" she asks, knowing the answer and knowing deep down what that answer means.

"I don't know love," he, not Tyler, answers with a tip of the head and an arrogant smirk that couldn't belong to anyone but him. "Did I?"

And in this moment she has two choices.

Choice one, the one she mentally denotes the sane choice: Push him away and unleash her revulsion. Because she is honestly revolted by him. By his duplicity and wickedness and by her own treacherous desire.

Choice two, the crazy choice: Play pretend. Feign ignorance and get something she can't pretend she hasn't thought about with no repercussions and a clean-ish conscience

She only has a second to make up her mind and later when the guilt hits she uses that as an excuse. She gives a short forced laugh, "Oooh who knew you were Mr sweet talk" she pauses and offers him her terms. "Tyler."

Uncertainty only animates his features for a moment before she sees him make his decision. He doesn't want her like this, shrouded in denial, but he'll take it because she read him right; no one has ever wanted her more. "Well I've got hidden depths," he says to make sure she knows that he will always know she knew. Still he makes the deal and seals their pact of silence with a word. "Care"

He kisses her then with a sort of angry gratitude and his confliction only makes the harsh soft feel of his lips all the more intense. She throws him to the grown with an effortless swing of her arms and straddles him, her hands travelling over Tyler's bare chest while her eyes lock onto Klaus's. "God I want you" she offers him like a truce and the lingering resentment falls from his eyes so that they shine with desire and admiration. "Mutual" he mutters before flipping them over so he's between her legs and his hands can roam greedily over her body, searching, mapping, memorising.

He frees her breasts from her bra and lavishes each one in turn with attention. Kissing and fondling, making her moan and arch into his touch. "Please" she begs without knowing what she's asking for.

He knows. He strips off her skinny jeans and kneels at her feet. Starts there at her ankle with hot open-mouthed kisses while his hands go ahead, sliding up her calves and across her thighs as his mouth makes the tantalizing journey up her smooth legs until he's holding her waist and nipping and sucking at the satin skin of her inner thighs.

She's determined not to compare him to the body's rightful owner. She has to push that from her mind or she won't be able to do this and she can't stop now she has to have him. His tongue finds her through the silk of her knickers and she keens appreciatively. "Please"

The silk rips easily in his grasp and suddenly Tyler is the furthest thing from her mind. Wow, does he know what he's doing with his tongue? One thousand years to practice and she thinks he must have put every one to good use. "Jesus" she hisses and bucks against him.

He works her body expertly, his fingers teasing as he bites and sucks and brings her close only to hold her on the edge while she's pleads out her need in a stream of nonsensical words until he hears the one he's waiting for. "God please, I need, ah, please, God Klaus"

He sucks hard and plunges his fingers into her and she comes with another grateful invocation of his true name. He's inside her before she's even finished spasming and the feel of him stretching her as he begins to move renews her orgasm, or she comes again and the two merge. She isn't sure and it doesn't matter.

The kisses he plants on her throat as he takes her are wet and messy and they make her feel like the most vital thing in the universe. "Caroline, fuck" he mutters into her hair and she drags him by his own hair so she can kiss his mouth again and revel in the clashing of teeth and tongues as they struggle for an uncoordinated moment to find each other's rhythm.

It's their first time and it comes with all the excitement of those toe-curling moments when discord turns to harmony as they learn each other. For a wild guilty moment she regrets that it's not his lithe athletic body over hers. That she's only learning half of who he is. She silences her own mind by bucking her body against him and reveling in the friction.

He growls, a hungry lupine growl and bruises her hips in his hands as he pins her to the ground and holds her still while he drives into her. One hand travels to her shoulder when she tries to reach towards him and he pins her flat on her back so she's limited to wrapping her legs around him in her quest to meld their bodies together.

"Caroline" he gasps and quickens his pace again until he's moving with all Tyler's hybrid speed and she's fluttering randomly against his trapping hands like a moth in a jar, wild and desperate.

"Klaus" she keens as she comes and he explodes inside her with a savage growl.

He pushes her back as she tries to rise, thinking they were finished, and shakes his head. They kiss again and without leaving her body he flips them till she's above him and guides her hips to ride him.

She loves that. Loves the feel of him below her and the suppliant lust in his eyes. "That's it my queen" he praises her as she takes over the rhythm. "Perfect"

He might be talking about the sex but she thinks he may be talking about her, either way she's never felt so close to it.

Eventually, when even her vamipire stamina is exhausted and the bright sunshine has faded to the crepuscular monochrome of evening he rolls her onto her side. He kisses her shoulder and slips gently into her from behind, taking her with a disconcerting tenderness, his arms wrapped tightly around her body like a warm and pleasurable prison.

She comes gently and for one last time she murmurs his name as they both shudder to a quiet final orgasm. "My love" he responds and turns her so she's snuggle against Tyler's smooth broad chest. "My Caroline"

For long moments she's too spent and too wrapped up in warm arms and loving words to think of anything and then, like the gradually building sound of a distant ominous storm, the guilt comes. He feels so good, and she feels so good in his arms with his fingers tracing invisible artistic patterns on her skin, that she shuts it out and resolves to ignore it and stay that way forever.

Her mistake is looking up from his chest. He smiles at her with that bashfully boyish smile of his transplanted onto Tyler's dark handsome face and she can't silence the guilt anymore as it grows within her to a deafening roar.

Panic grips her at the thought she could be discovered. She broke their deal. Over and over again she broke the terms and shattered the charade of ignorance when she called his name.

She pulls away hastily searching for her clothes that lie rumpled and muddied, but miraculously undamaged, around the clearing. She stares down at her clothed body for a moment and gathers her courage to look at him as she tries with a hopeless desperation to fix things.

"Come on Tyler" she says in a voice that sounds strange and hoarse to her and he flinches minutely, just the barest twitch of the muscles in his face before his eyes, which had been so warm just moments before go granite hard.

"Yes Care" he sneers the familiar name as he mercifully renews their pact and the realization that she has hurt him, that he can be hurt at all, makes her stomach churn. "We need to find Bonnie. I have a surprise for you'

Bonnie is too caught up in her own fear of magical repercussions to notice how poorly she feigns shock at the revelation that Klaus occupies Tyler's body but the hybrid gives her a scornful look and she watches her own feet, feeling shamed on every level.

When he plunges his clawed hand into Tyler's chest and threatens to end her boyfriend she sees the hurt behind the action and remorse mixes with the fear and anger that rise within her.

Bonnie pays the price for them all once again and as the witch cries over her grams she hugs Tyler close and looks anywhere but into his eyes. That night they make love and she's frigid with terror that he'll somehow just know what she did. So she's feeling guilty and frankly pretty sexed out for the day and the whole experience leaves her empty and kinda sick.

"You didn't…" Tyler says after he comes inside her with an emphatic "I love you" that makes her cringe.

"It doesn't matter" she assures him softly and touches his face. "You're back, that's what matters and I love you." All that at least is true and so she can say it with conviction.

"No way" Tyler flips her playfully onto her back his eyes shining with love and the pure joy of cheating death. "I'm going to take care of you, me lady"

He goes down on her and she's desperate to come just to please him but she can't bury her guilt deeply enough and her body refuses to respond. Eventually she hurls herself deeper into her shame and closes her eyes.

She tips her head back and relives being with him. She conjures the feeling of his tongue on her and pictures herself from above spread out and gasping among the fallen leaves and between her legs a lean body and dirty blond hair and she comes.

 **A/N maybe a one shot, maybe the start of something with a real live plot. What do you all reckon? Should i continue I have at least one more scenario/scene/follow on knocking about in my brain.**

 **ps if anyone's following A Scent of Hope there are more chapters coming very soon**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N So easy love was originally a one shot but I've decided to write a few more chapters, I'm weaving them around season 4 canon with a Klaroline twist. This one takes place mostly in 4x06. Hope you enjoy.**

 **Simply business**

When she meets Hayley the first thing she feels is relief. Tyler is a cheat and her hidden sins are expunged. The weight of guilt she's been lugging around with her is becoming unbearable and when her eyes fell on the sexy brunette she thought she'd seen a get out of jail free card all wrapped up in sneering bravado and skinny jeans.

But Haley it turns out is just a friend and a good one at that it seems, not just to Tyler but to all and any hybrids ready to try and break free of Klaus' sire bond. She smiles tightly when they tell her about their plans and she knows that Tyler misreads her unease as doubt in him.

He looks into her eyes and tells her again how Haley is not his lover and she feels wretched. So Haley was there for him while he was been breaking bone after bone all over the Appalachian Mountains for her and what was she doing? Flaunting diamond bracelets and hording pencil sketches.

And then Elena goes bat shit crazy and Klaus snatches her and she thinks maybe an unkillable hybrid with first hand experience of the hunter's curse and a thousand years of street smarts is probably the best bet for keeping Elena safe. But she keeps silent and wonders if she's failing her friend because she's too terrified that if she speaks up someone will, somehow, infer from it her guilt.

So off she goes again, the little blonde distraction, to find him in the Grill drinking wine in the low light and looking unassumingly gorgeous and uncharacteristically subdued.

She plays the role they gave her, plays it as only she can with a queen bitch flourish and a secret relish. She will never tell anyone how much she actually enjoys the game, the tightrope walk between too keen, where he'll smell a rat, and too harsh where he might call her bluff and walk away.

She hits the right note with a haughty "That's none of your business" when he eludes to Tyler's fictional infidelity. When the hell did she get so good at manipulation? Maybe the lies of omission she's been telling Tyler and her friends since that day in the woods with him have honed a natural talent for deceit.

"Yes, well, just know that if Tyler was still sired to me he never would have hurt you" he says with a sincerity that troubles her, it hints at a connection between them she'd sooner deny. "I wouldn't have let him."

The silent declaration that he would never hurt her if she were his hangs momentarily in the air and she feels unease crease her face before he breaks the moment like snapping a twig. "Can I at least offer you a drink?"

Even though she's here on Tyler and the gang's orders, she still feels treacherous as she accepts. She should not be drinking with him, talking with him, looking at him with his small pleased smile and his deceptively boyish eyes. She should not be nervous in a way that feels only half like battle nerves and half like date nerves. She should not notice that the mass of beads and leather necklaces beneath his crisp military style jacket are not the same set he wore last time she saw him.

They sent her yes but she can't honestly say she's sorry to be here, that the game isn't enticing, that he isn't, in his strange forbidden way, enticing.

He takes a noticeable breath and her heart speeds up, instinctively realising where he's about to go. "Caroline," he says carefully and flashes his eyes briefly to meet hers before dropping them nervously back towards his drink. Oh god how can he be nervous? Doesn't he know he's the devil? Doesn't he realize that a thousand years of wickedness should long ago have turned him to unfeeling stone? "We-"

"No" she snaps a little louder than she intended and the barmaid glances curiously in her direction, she gives the girl a tight smile and continues in a low hiss. "Seriously, don't. Ever!"

He nods and swallows and once again she sees that she has hurt him. Someone needs to clue him in on the fact that evil villains do not get to look like a kicked puppy not even for the millisecond it takes him to cover it with feigned indifference. "So sweetheart" he says with a dashing smile, the charming shallow smile she imagines he gives any pretty girl be she ally, enemy, or victim. "How's school?"

She looks at him skeptically and rolls her eyes. "Seriously?" she asks. "You want to hear about school?"

What she has just decided to call his "sweetheart smile", cheap and charming, falls away and he looks sincere and determined.

"Is that so strange?" he asks with a hint of challenge in his eyes. "To be interested in you?"

No, she tells herself, it's not strange. But lately what with the drama of Elena's transition and Tyler's sire bond she has felt distinctly like supporting cast and it's nice to be the centre of attention, even if it's his.

So she tells him about boring mundane stuff like her classes and assignments and he listens, like it matters, and asks which authors she's enjoyed and what subject she'll do at university.

In the end she gets so comfortable, and perhaps a little buzzed on Cabernet Franc, that she's ranting about the bitches that constitute her cheer squad and he's chuckling, bemused and endeared by her indignation at their lack of team spirit and work ethic.

She cringes when she notices the cozy laughter in his gaze. "Wow" she says with a self-conscious grin. "I've been talking a lot haven't I?"

He smirks. "Not at all love, you're a vampire now, taking a breath is optional. And clearly overrated" his eyes glint teasingly and though in the low light they're barely blue at all she still loses herself in their captivating sparkle for a moment that is long enough to feel awkward when she breaks it.

"Another drink love?" he offers and she nods and glances at her phone while he orders.

Stefan's messages fill the screen and she curses herself for not paying better attention, she's supposed to be the distraction not the distracted. Elena is gone, they're in the shit, and her stomach goes into free-fall.

She tries for an innocent smile that feels like a crack across her face. "So, here's the thing, I didn't just come here to try to get you to release Elena."

Klaus looks knowing and amused, he's no fool he knows she's there to play him. He's not taken in, he plays along simply because it pleases him, because she pleases him. "You don't say."

"I came here to distract you so that Stefan could go to your house and break her out, which he did. And, don't get mad, but then he lost her." As she speaks she sees his fury settle like a black storm in his eyes. He turns to go with vengeful intent written in every movement.

"Klaus." She tries to call him back, to tell him the rest but he's lost his appetite for indulging her

"Caroline, you're beautiful, but if you don't stop talking, I will kill you." Even his threats are charming when it comes to her and she relaxes minutely into the hope that he'll listen to her.

"They figured out how to stop the hallucinations." She calls to stop him in his tracks and he spins to meet her eyes with a hard demanding stare.

"Okay, you have ten seconds to tell me."

It comes out in a rush and she doesn't realize until she's finished that she's gripping his arm, as if she could hold him there by force.

"You want what?" he still looks angry and she still hasn't let go but her grip has changed from desperate to light and without conscious thought her thumb has begun to turn cajoling circles through his sleeve.

"As soon as Jeremy kills a vampire the curse is broken," she insists.

"And you think I might have a hybrid spare for this proposed killing" he asks in a disparaging tone.

"Well it was Stefan's idea, but yes I'm asking you to help my best friend" she sees a tiny flicker of indecision in him and ploughs on as her hand slides up from his forearm to his bicep. "Please Klaus, its what you want right? Elena, the mark, the cure. Those are the things you want, so help us"

He glances at her hand on his arm and pointedly mirrors the action. Her bare skin tingles under his touch and every hair on her arm stands up. "Not all the things I want" he says in a low voice that makes her swallow nervously. She doesn't drop her gaze, partly because she has to make him help Elena and partly because looking away just doesn't feel like an option right now.

"What else do you want?" she asks hoarsely, knowing the answer and buzzing with excitement and dread at hearing it said aloud.

He tips his head down and looks up at her through his lashes. "Caroline" he chides in a low intimate voice that makes her feel frightened and powerful at once. "You know the answer to that"

A voice, the voice she listened to in the forest, whispers in her mind that there is an opportunity here. That if the price for saving Elena is sleeping with him then who could blame her for paying it? No one would know and even if they did she could claim, believably, that she had no choice. She licks her lips and moves closer her eyes drawn to his mouth for an instant before her better, saner, self exerts control and demands that she stop.

"Seriously" she tears herself angrily away from him. "You think I'm going to sleep with you for it, like some kind of prostitute. You're disgusting!"

He should look hurt again at her rejection but he looks decidedly smug and she realises she misread his intention and in so doing gave herself away. There's no way he missed that moment of indecision or that flash of desire. She curses herself and crosses her arms defensively

"Not at all Caroline, I was merely going to ask you to allow me to take you on a date." He says smoothly.

"What?" she's not sure what she was expecting but it wasn't that and she shakes her head in confusion.

"I do want more from you than simply to sleep with you again" he tells her with gentle determined honesty. Her lips part, perhaps to speak and maybe just because he's stepped in close again and his proximity disorientates her as much as the word 'again' that sets off memories of him like fireworks in her belly.

"One date Caroline. Just one date" he steps back smiling mischievously and spreads his arms. "For Elena"

When she tells Tyler about the arrangement he's already angry about how cheaply they sold out his fellow hybrid and her attempts to give the situation a selfless spin by claiming she thought it would help him and Haley maintain the ruse they think will fool him into not realizing the are freeing his hybrids form under his nose, fall on justifiably deaf ears.

The glass shatters over her shoulder as it hits the wall and she goes without another word


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N This one is mostly set if 4x07 My brothers keeper (the pageant) with brief mention of 4x08. Hope you enjoy**

 **Closing fast**

The cooling air of the early evening stirs over her skin as they walk side by side away from the Lockwood gardens and she shivers out of habit. A moment later his jacket covers on her shoulders and she smiles coyly at him as his hands withdraw brushing lightly over her back.

"Thanks" she says. Despite that she doesn't feel the cold she can't help appreciate his attentiveness.

"Welcome love" his smiles and she smiles dumbly back as she tries to think of something to say.

He stops and she realises, with something that feels worryingly like disappointment, that they're at her gate. He turns to her with a crooked awkward smile. "Thank you Caroline. For your company" he says with that endearing bashfulness she'd decided after the Mikaelson ball last year must be an act. Because seriously he cannot have looks this damn good for a thousand years and still have any self doubt at all when it comes to women.

She struggles to return his smile, the moment feels too heavy and charged and her heart is suddenly rampaging about in her chest. "Yeah" she replies and curses the quiet intimacy of her tone. "It was fun"

"That it was sweetheart" his fingers brush back her hair, barely touching her cheek and she's certain he's going to kiss her. "Goodnight Caroline"

Then he's gone in a blur of vampiric speed and she watches the vacant space where he'd been standing for a long shocked beat before she shakes herself irritatedly and goes inside.

Just inside the door she realises she's still wearing his suit jacket about her shoulders and slips it off, folding it over her arm and pensively stroking the material. She hesitates for a moment and looks around shiftily, as if someone might be in her hallway watching her, then tentatively brings the jacket up to her face and inhales the scent of his expensive cologne that she's been catching faint whiffs of all day.

"Urgh" she throws the jacket away from her. "Oh my God" she reprimands herself, what the hell is wrong with her? She cannot be crushing on Klaus. She is not crushing on Klaus. She brings up Tyler's number on her phone and her thumb hovers over the call button for a second before she grunts in aggravation and lays the phone down.

She can't call Tyler. At the pageant she'd felt his eyes on her as she'd escaped the crowd and walked with Klaus along the water's edge. She'd been briefly conscious of not wanting to appear to be having too good a time. Tyler is already jealous enough of the original and she really didn't want to fuel the fire. But if she's honest a glass of champagne and a playful spat over her Miss Mystic application later and she'd barely given her boyfriend another thought.

So she'll focus on something else. Stefan is a mess and Elena is acting like a big Damon loving freak. That's what she should be thinking about. Not Klaus, not even Tyler who'll be fine, but her friends.

She texts Stefan and he appears quickly enough for her to know he wasn't at home

"Hey" she greets and he smiles, warm and sad, as he enters and she's struck again by how unfair it is of Elena to be hanging off Damon's every word like some undead groupie while Stefan, her epic love, is heartbroken and alone. "Are you ok?"

Stefan leans back in his chair and rubs his eyes as they talk. He talks of letting go, of allowing Elena to simply move on with his brother and she rails against it. No, she thinks vehemently, Elena cannot choose the bad boy. No one is choosing the bad boy!

"She's lost," she tells Stefan and wonders if she's talking only about Elena. "Okay, you and her, epic" she sighs. "Her and Damon, ugh, God. There's something wrong with her." Something wrong with me? She flinches internally away from the thought and focuses on Stefan. "Just promise me you won't stop looking for the cure"

"Klaus won't let me even if I wanted to," Stefan replies as he looks away to pour himself a drink.

Klaus. Her mind stutters at the sound of his name and she's assaulted by the memory of his amused eyes as he'd popped the champagne's cork.

"Why does he care?" she asks confused. "He doesn't even want it"

"To make more hybrids" Stefan tells her and she snorts and thinks worridly of Tyler and his suicidal plan to un-sire his hybrid pack and as she tells Stefan suddenly it all clicks into place.

"Oh God" she sits up with the realization. Elena is sired to Damon, it all makes sense just like Klaus had told her it would.

Stefan looks like he's drowning in the revelation, a dozen emotions fight across his usually passive features and she reaches for him, her hand finding his. "We'll fix this," she promises.

"I'll talk to Klaus," she offers, resolutely ignoring the flutter of excitement in her stomach at the thought. "He might know something that can help"

Stefan looks like he's going to throw up and she knows he's worrying about where the sire bond might lead Elena and Damon, neither of whom are answering their phones.

"I'll go right now," she says determinedly. "If anyone's gonna know what to do it's Klaus ok. He's a bazillion and he's all up on sire bonds right? What with all his little hybrid lackeys" she winces at Stefan's pained look and stands.

"You stay here," she orders. "Just keep drinking and try not to think about it. I'll be back soon"

The Mikaelson mansion has never held the level of sinister foreboding that should accompany the town's resident evil, its too brightly lit and tastefully renovated for that. The door isn't locked, what after all could the occupants fear that couldn't easily break the lock? So she goes in unannounced and with a near silent tread finds him off guard next to the large fireplace with a sketchpad on his lap and charcoal smutting his fingers.

"Hey" she greets from where she leans against the doorway and he startles slightly.

"Caroline?" he says in a confused voice as he sits up, closing the pad and laying it down on the table. "Everything alright love?"

She harrumphs noisily at how not alright things are and flounces into the room, throwing herself down beside him. "No" she almost growls. "I figured out what's wrong with Elena"

He restrains a knowing smile. "And what is it you think you've figured out then love?"

"That she's sired to Damon" she huffs. "And knowing him he'll be taking every advantage, urgh"

"You think Damon is aware of the sire bond?" he asks curiously.

"No" she admits reluctantly. "He's just got Elena eating out of his hand and no way is he going to pass up the opportunity to get into her pants. He's so gross"

Klaus raises and eyebrow at her vehemence but chooses to change tack. "So you come to me because?"

"Well" she isn't going to admit, or even acknowledge, that she's running to him because when she was scared and didn't know what to do his was the only name that came to mind. "You're the resident expert on sire bonds right? I figured you might know how to break one"

He gives her a skeptical look. "My interest is hardly in breaking them love."

She doesn't sense any finality or dismissal in his tone so she pulls her legs up underneath her and turns to face him. "I guess not," she says. "But there has got to be a way"

"Perhaps," he tilts his head. "Sire bonds are the product of a deep emotional connection with the sire. With my hybrids it's gratitude and pack mentality but before them I did have a few bonded to me over the centuries. All I had relationship with before turning them, mostly female, exclusively lovers"

She processes that and gets stuck on the tacit revelation that he's been with guys but before she speaks he continues. "It is the strength of human emotion that forms the bond. Elena is only sired to Damon because as a human she was connected to him, deeply and emotionally connected. Possibly, probably, in love"

"In love?" she asks aghast

"Of the few that I sired who became bonded to me all were in one way or another in love with me, poor things"

"Where are they now?" she asks, intrigued and sharply jealous of these lost lovers of his.

"A bonded hybrid may make a good soldier but a bonded vampire does not make a good companion" he sighs. "Not if you prize a lover's spirit or opinion"

She nods, she gets that a sire-bonded drip wouldn't suit him. She knows enough from their own game of cat and mouse to know he enjoys the chase, the ebb and flow, the spats. All that human stuff she prizes too.

"So what did you do?"

"Oh love," he laughs but his eyes exist somewhere in the past, dark and unknowable. "I don't think you'd approve of my strategy here"

"Right. Of course" she rolls her eyes, how could she have imagined anything else? "You killed them"

"I did," he says it so flatly that she checks her judgment, sensing that the stories behind that matter of fact admission are long and tragic. "Better for them anyway. Being a slave to love is not as romantic as the poets would have you believe"

"Well we're not killing Elena," she says downheartedly. She thinks for a moment then she brightens hopefully. "Can we kill Damon?"

He grins. "I certainly have no objection. Ripper might take it hard though"

"I guess" she huffs and pouts. "Damn"

"Sorry not to have an answer for you love" he says and then with a deliberate casualness that she's not buying he makes a questioning gesture with his hand. "Will you have a drink Caroline?"

She hesitates, he doesn't have any answers and she should get back to Stefan. But finally she can't stop herself. "Sure," she nods and she catches a glimpse of his surprised, delighted smile as he moves across the room to the drinks cabinet.

Without conscious intent to snoop she leans over and flicks open his sketchpad and he doesn't need to be a vampire to hear her stunned intake of breath from the other side of the room. "Oh" she mumbles stupidly and feels the air move around her as he vamps back and snatches the pad away. She stands awkwardly but he doesn't look at her and she's sorry she pried.

A sketchpad is like a diary she imagines, private and personal. She wouldn't pick up a journal and she shouldn't have opened his pad. But it's too late now because she did and she can't unsee its contents. Still she's in the wrong and she's big enough to admit it.

"I'm sorry," she offers uncertainly. "I shouldn't-"

"Forget it," he growls still not meeting her eyes and she can see his embarrassment morph into anger in front of her eyes.

"Kinda hard to do" she tries to keep the tone light despite his darkening expression. "I" she pauses and fights to exert control over her foolish tongue. Fails. "Can I see them?"

His head comes up sharply and it's clear this is not the reaction he expected. Honestly she's a little surprised at herself. He narrows his eyes suspiciously and she rolls hers in response and sits back down indicating the space beside her with a tip of her head.

He sits and frowns when she shuffles closer and looks at him expectantly then he sighs loudly and hands her the pad.

"Wow" she murmurs as she flicks through the pages and out of the corner of her eye she sees the tension in his face. Her fingers trace the lines of one of the images, is she really that beautiful she wonders or has he taken some artistic liberties.

On the first page there are a couple from earlier, her hair straightened, expression full of reluctant amusement. The pages tell a reverse chronological record of their, god their what? Friendship? Surely not. She knows if she goes back far enough she'll see herself at the ball or dying of a hybrid bite but she doesn't get that far because one of the images traps her and she stares captivated.

"Caroline?" his voice is uncharacteristically tentative and he is clearly expecting her anger to surface any moment.

In the picture her hair lies spread around her head like a halo in the fallen leaves and her eyes are closed, chin tilted upwards, expression blissful. Is this what he saw that day in the woods, it is certainly how she'd felt when she'd been beneath him; stunningly beautiful and utterly content, at least for a while.

Eventually she tears her eyes away from the image and they find his, dark with something dangerous and unsure. She takes a shuddering breath and lays the pad down deliberately before turning back to look at him and letting her fingers trail over the back of his hand. "They're beautiful," she says and the corner of his mouth twitches.

"Well my inspiration is beautiful." he murmurs and it should sound like a line but it just sounds true as his free hand moves to gingerly stroke her cheek with his knuckles. "Sweetheart" he whispers and she watches his eyes as they flick to her lips, igniting a blaze of anticipation in her body.

"I should go" she says reluctantly, her voice not loud enough to hint at leaving as her hand settles more firmly over his.

"Of course," he licks his lips and she stares at them. His real lips. How would they feel? she wonders. Not like when he kissed her with Tyler's, she knows that. His are fuller they look hotter, softer. His face is rough with stubble, would it scratch? His hand withdraws and her eyes follow the slender fingers as they land over her own. Then back up his arm, slim and deceptively powerful under the thin cotton of his shirt.

Oh god, she thinks, she's going to kiss him. She's not even going to wait for him to make the first move. He just looks so good and they had so much fun today, and he drew all those beautiful pictures of her. She feels like a goddess with him and she's lost to the need to let him worship her.

She leans forward her lips parting, ready to taste him, and eyes riveted to his.

"Caroline" his voice ghosts warmly over her mouth, he's so close just another inch and she'll be kissing him and she can't deny the soaring feeling in her chest.

The sharp electronic trill of her phone shatters the silence and they surge apart, him standing and turning away her drawing herself together with adrenaline pumping and heart hammering against her ribs as she rushes to silence it's crass insistence.

"Sorry" she mutters as she fumbles awkwardly with it. Stefan's name flashes across her screen and she winces, she was supposed to be looking after him.

She looks at Klaus who's watching her with an uncertain expression. "It's Stefan," she says as if by way of apology. "I…"

"Of course" he nods and tries for a close-lipped smile. "You should help your friend. I'll see what I can find out"

She nods awkwardly the feeling that she's been saved by the bell warring with a sinking disappointment that makes it hard for her to command her feet to get her the hell out of there

"Come on sweetheart" he lays a hand, hot and confident, on her back and steers her to the door. "Go and look after Ripper. I'll see if any of my witches know anything ok?"

She nods and smiles gratefully. "Thanks," she says and not just for the help he's promising but for being merciful enough to escort her out when surely he must want her to stay as much as she wants him to make her.

"Oh don't thank me yet love" he smirks playfully. "I'm probably up to some terrible evil. Plotting something fiendish most likely"

She purses her lips in amusement, feeling the awkwardness fall behind them. "That does seem likely," she says with an answering smirk and then more softly, "goodnight." Then she goes with a hidden smile and a light tread to offer Stefan what scant comfort she can.

Stefan crashes on her couch after long hours of drinking and talking and when they wake up all their Elena problems still hang over them. She tells Stefan she'll talk to Tyler and doesn't question why she didn't think of him first. Honestly she's just glad of the excuse to leap straight into the drama so that they don't have to talk about the pageant.

She gets more drama than she bargains for. And when Kim the crazy hybrid bitch makes a play for alpha by kidnapping her it's Tyler that comes to her rescue. He loves her so much and she loves him too, her Tyler.

She's determined not to think about Adrian's warning when Kim was hurting her. "Klaus won't like this" he'd said. Was it common knowledge then? That he cares, that she matters to him. Tyler wraps his arm around her carefully as the leave the barn and she smiles bravely at him. "Thanks" she says with a sincere smile. "For saving me"

He just tightens his arm around her and kisses her hair. She promises herself she won't go anywhere near Klaus again, she'll stay away and avoid temptation. She'll be a good girlfriend to Tyler no matter what. She swears it to him in her mind. No matter what.

 **Oooh i'm hungry if only someone would feed(back) me. See what i did there, i'm so funny sometimes :-P**


	4. Chapter 4

**Strained loyalty**

"No matter what" she tells herself as Tyler reveals his insane lets-shove-Klaus-in-my-body-and-bury-me plan.

It's utter madness on so many levels. There is so much that can go wrong and even if everything goes according to plan she loses Tyler. She loses them both a panicked honest part of herself reminds her and she shakes her head at Tyler ready to fight him tooth and nail on this.

But she can't look at him as he insists he has to do this. If he sees her eyes would he know that she's almost as scared for the original as she is for him and his pack? Would he guess its not just him she's out to save?

"I need your support," he tells her and his hands squeeze her shoulders insistently. She sighs. A good girlfriend, she reminds herself, no matter what.

She brings her eyes up to his and nods but she's too choked up with fear to speak. She's going to lose Tyler and she thinks she'd have fought him harder if she wasn't so guilty about everything with Klaus, so maybe its all her own fault anyway.

She takes a deep breath and makes her way into the grill. She wouldn't do this for anyone other than Stefan. But he'd been so desperate when he told her he needed her to distract Klaus so he could get the sword and save poor sired Elena. How could she refuse?

How could she resist? Resist seeing him one last time before Tyler body jacks him and encases them both in concrete.

His work stirs her; makes her heart remember his sketches, makes her body imagine his hands. She gazes at it for a long moment even after she feels his eyes on her while she gathers herself enough to sass him. "Here to steal Tiny Tim's crutches?"

His eyes are bright and puckish as they circle each other. "Well Dickens was a dark man. You would have liked him"

"Nice snowflake by the way" she offers

Klaus rolls his eyes in playful exasperation. "Is my work really that literal"

"No I mean it," she says not knowing why she suddenly feels the need to be so serious. Why with him ready to be charming and flippant she's suddenly determined to make the moment significant. "There's something " she pauses and looks at the painting again. "Lonely about it"

He swallows and she can see he's shaken by her words. "I'll take that as a compliment" he says with a grim sort of determination in the set of his jaw and in the moment before he draws his armour of charm around himself again and offers her champagne she sees right through his ancient eyes into the tragic solitude of his soul. Into the dark echoing loneliness beneath his arrogant facade and she has to turn away before she's swallowed by it.

He follows her, insistent as always, and the back and forth of their banter fizzes like the champagne he pours for her. She feels lightheaded and vaguely buzzed as she swims in the familiar eddies of attraction around him and she wants to stay all day, and long into the night. Make him late for his own funeral. Save him. Save Tyler.

Because seriously, screw the pack. They were torturing her just a week ago bitch Kim and drippy Adrian, she doesn't give a rat's ass about any of them. She cares about Tyler and damn her treacherous heart about Klaus. And she doesn't want any of this.

Stefan can't find the sword and their only option is to get Tyler to back down. He won't. He won't stop. His pack and his revenge, mean too much to him. He calls her out on not standing by him, he thinks she's siding with Elena and Stefan, doesn't know she's halfway to siding with Klaus if it saves them all from this madness.

Still she tries to save him, her Tyler. She comes up with the plan of using Rebekah's body. Does what she can to be the girl he deserves in his life. Shuts out all her regret over Klaus, hides it well.

Hides it until Stefan starts talking about how he feels bad for Klaus and then she can't help but voice it too. That clawing guilt in her throat choking her with regret that she is destroying him. That though he's wicked, and god knows he is, he's something else too and now she won't get to find out what.

She wants to confess to Stefan then. He is after all the least likely to flip out and tell everyone and the most likely to understand why she's drawn to Klaus. Stefan may have plenty of reason to hate the hybrid but he also knows him. Knows how dazzling his charm can be, how intriguing his candour, and how disorientating his vulnerability.

But when it comes to it, when Stefan talks about trust, it's not her own sins she confesses. She doesn't tell him about the forest, or the way she's been feeling since. She doesn't tell him about Klaus' fingers on her cheek and his lips so close to hers. Instead she tells him about Elena and Damon and hates herself for being such a coward.

…..

By morning they know how badly wrong Tyler's plan went. When they find out that Haley is a traitor and all the hybrids are dead she's actually relieved and surprised by the callous. "What did they expect?" that runs through her mind.

They went after Klaus, a bunch of cocky hybrid newbies with werewolf tempers and foolish hubris, after Klaus. Didn't they realize they weren't strong enough? Didn't they feel it when they were near him? The depth of his power vibrating back and forth in their veins where whatever magic keeps them alive after death flows.

Didn't they feel, just by being close to him, how he invades the dark scary place inside them all who's power is passed down from him? How he makes it hum and resonate and dance with fear and energy. Or maybe it's just her.

She can't find Tyler in the small hours of the morning and so she goes to the mansion, terrified that Klaus has already taken his revenge. Terrified that though Tyler isn't among the mess of hybrid body parts strewn over the forests floor like so much bloody confetti, he has already paid his sire back in blood for his transgression.

"Klaus" she calls desperately as she burst into the mansion. "Klaus please-"

She's cut off mid sentence when his hand clamps around her neck, lifting her from her feet. Blood decorates his face, accenting his rage in scarlet streaks and she has never been more afraid of him.

"Did you know?" he roars and she can tell from his anger that he's guessed the answer. Still there's a flicker of hope in his eyes. Hope that maybe she is different; that she is the one that didn't betray him and that scares her even more.

She claws at his crushing hand and he throws her to the ground. She wants to ask about Tyler but that will only make him angrier. She wants to apologies, to justify herself, but she knows how hollow it would sound. So she stays silent and looks up at him with scared regretful eyes.

His anger falls away and he takes two wobbly backward steps and sits heavily on the couch. "Did you know?" he whispers and the gathering water in his eyes makes her heart constrict.

"Klaus," his name is all she has for him, a plea and an apology. She wants to crawl across the floor to his feet, climb into his lap tell him that's she's so sorry, so very truly sorry. Tell him how she'd hated this plan form the start. And please don't kill Tyler, please please please don't kill her boyfriend.

She stands instead and when a single tear breaks the banks of his eyes and cuts a cleaning path through the blood on his cheeks she takes a magnetized step towards him, his name falling again from her lips, one trembling hand reaching out to comfort him. Then her phone rings and it's Stefan and the news that Mayor Lockwood is dead.

He hears of course and they both know that they both know the truth about Carol's 'accident'. They stare each other down, both angry, both justified. She's actually angry enough with him, disappointed enough in him, that she's ready to forget her fear and throw down the accusations building in her throat but he beats her too it.

"Did," he takes a step towards her and she holds his eyes and clenches her jaw. "You," another step and her body tenses with fear and rage. "Know?"

She tilts her chin defiantly at him. He killed Carol who hadn't done a damn thing to him, out of nothing but spite, and she will not apologise for any part she might have had in trying to put this monster down. "Yes."

Black veins crackle beneath his yellow eyes and he clenches his fists and leans in close to whispers around his double fangs. "Run"

And she does.

 **A Question for my lovely readers. I am a bear of two minds with this story. So you guys get to chose and option for the direction I take it**

 **Option 1: Keep weaving around cannon, keeping season 4 events much as they are with a klaroline twist. Retell the significant episodes with extra hidden Klaus/Caroline interaction**

 **Option 2: Veer away from cannon and follow a different plot through season 4. Basically I have an idea for Tyler to call Caroline out on her relationship with Klaus and that to influence the events of Into the Wild (the one where Klaus bites Caroline) putting Klaus and Caroline in a very different situation from cannon.**

 **So feedback me and let me know if you have an opinion on which way it should go. And remember all roads lead to Klaroline and neither scenario with have Caroline living happily ever after with Stephan or Tyler. Because well blurgh to that.**

 **On that note is anyone finding season 7 Steroline very boring? I don't mind them as a couple and I love them as friends but they seem to have just slapped them together this season without much build up and barely any passion. The originals by contrast is all exciting and tense and good god JoMo is lovely**


	5. Chapter 5

**SO here we are spinning away from the original easy love story. which is continuing away from cannon. in this version i plan to write each chapter weaved around cannon**

 **A killers arms**

They killed Kol. She hangs up on Elena, who's finally decided they should fill her in on the latest madness and stares out of her bedroom window for long frozen moments while her mind catches up. Seriously what were they thinking? Killing Kol Mikaelson and risking the wrath of the entire original family. You have to admire their ambition but seriously question their sanity, and their morality. A whole sire line wiped out in an instant, their own kind the world over snuffed out to save Elena from life as a monster.

She loves Elena truly she does. Her friend is the sweetest most deserving person she can imagine. She deserves happiness, sure, but is her humanity really worth all those lives. Did all those vampires deserve to die for it? Did Klaus, Elijah and Rebecca really deserve to lose another brother for it?

Klaus. She squeezes her eyes shut at the thought of him. A few weeks ago his hybrids, the ones he'd tried to replace his family with to assuage his loneliness, turned on him. Now his brother is dead. His annoying little brother who he daggered and fought with and loved and hated for a millennia is gone and she can't imagine how that feels.

She doesn't care she tells herself. He killed Carol Lockwood who was a decent enough sort of woman once she'd got over her vervain and kidnap phase. Who was a good mayor and a good mother and hadn't done anything to hurt him. He'd killed her in cold blood. Just like Jeremy and Elena had killed Kol.

But she is better than him. She has a compassion flowing through her heart that has long dried up in his. He is hurt, he is trapped and she is incapable of resisting.

Her heart pounds in heavy sluggish beats and her stomach turns with nervousness and guilt for even considering this. If Tyler knew what she was doing, if he knew she was following her foolish compassionate heart all the way to Elena's house and the fearsome murderer inside then he'd be furious.

Tyler wouldn't understand, he'd see it as a betrayal of him but honestly this has nothing to do with him. This is simply her nature. She sees as much injustice in Kol's death as she sees in Carol's and the same pity that moved her to reach out for Tyler in his pain moves her now along Elena's street and up the steps of her porch.

She hesitates at the door. Imagines herself reaching out through the wood to feel him raging, plotting, grieving? She hasn't seen him since the night he killed his hybrids, thinks he has avoided her as surely as she's avoided him. So much left unsaid that night and yet nothing either could say to bridge the gap her betrayal and his wicked spite rent between them.

One deep steadying breath and she pushes boldly into the kitchen making straight for the room where she's been told they trapped him. She can't see him and in the corner of her eye a movement makes her turn and there is Tyler pottering about the kitchen like that's a totally normal thing to be doing.

"You're still here?" she asks incredulously before she can stop herself. "What are you doing here?"

Tyler doesn't notice the slip; he looks positively giddy. "Gloating" he smirks with bright joyful eyes and though she can't blame him for delighting in Klaus' suffering she still can't ignore the wrongness of everything.

"Hello Caroline" Klaus' honeyed voice floats softly over her from behind, her name said carefully as if the word itself is so fragile it could break in his mouth. Her mind freezes. She came for him, to offer her condolences in some weird frenemies way but now Tyler's here and Klaus' voice is way too intimate.

Suddenly all the supernatural chaos and the big moral question marks disappear and all she can worry about is that Tyler might suspect something of what has passed between her and the original

She glares at him, warning him with her eyes to keep silent before turning back to her boyfriend and making an attempt to get them the hell out of there before she's exposed.

"Come home" she begs. "Don't stoop to his level"

But Tyler is resolved to bask in his sire's misery. "He ruined my life," he reminds her. "And I plan on being present for every second of his misery until I can kill him myself."

She seriously doubts that whatever advantage Tyler imagines he has here will actually lead to him defeating Klaus but she decides now isn't the time for that conversation, so she changes tack. A distraction is what they need, to occupy Tyler and keep him from provoking Klaus into spilling the beans about their tryst in the forest.

"Fine" she huffs in exasperation. "Then you can gloat and multitask, this place is a disaster" She finds a tablecloth and starts unfolding it. "Starting with the horrific burnt corpse"

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Klaus watching with a heartbroken expression as they cover his brother's body and regrets instantly her flippant words.

"Tyler's mother is dead." Klaus states, admitting for the first time what they all knew he was guilty of. "So is my brother. We're even" He pauses for a split second and she thinks she's never seen him so forlorn. He must sense a softening in her because he focuses on her and his voice turns reasonable and cajoling. "Call Bonnie" he says. "Get her to let me out of here"

Tyler tenses and she grips hard to her loyalties and turns on Klaus "I will never, ever, help you" she growls at him and watches his eyes shadow with anger.

"How quickly you forget the part where I saved Tyler from the misery of being a werewolf." He says in an infuriatingly earnest tone. "Or the night your mother invited me into her home to save the life of her precious daughter."

He is actually so screwed up, so utterly self-involved that he thinks he deserves some loyalty from them. She's furious with herself for letting things go so far with him for she wanting him so so very badly to be better than this. For being so very thirsty for drops of his morality that she chased every shimmering mirage of humanity he showed her, right into his arm.

Her anger boils over and all caution over provoking him and being discovered flees in the face of her rage. "How delusional are you? You killed his mother." She indicates vaguely in Tyler's direction and moves closer, magentised to him by her anger. "And let's not forget that we're standing in a house where Elena's aunt Jenna used to live. Or did you think that your charm would make us forget how you killed her, too?" she halts her wild tongue before she goes too far, before all the hopes she'd fought against and yet still harboured for him come spilling out and blow their secret out of the water.

"You know what? No. I am not going to engage in this." She has to get away otherwise she might not need to worry about Klaus spilling her secrets she'll be screaming in his face how she can't believe she ever trusted him, wanted him, slept with him. "You are not even worth the calories I burn talking to you." She says dismissively and it's that feigned indifference that breaks him.

In the instant before he moves she sees his eyes flare with hurt and then she's gasping in pain and gripping the standing lamp he thrusts through her stomach. It happens so fast she barely registers the agony in her guts or the weightless feeling as he brings her through the barrier and into his viscous embrace.

His arms close, vice-like, about her body and his fangs tear savagely through her skin. God he's so strong she thinks feeling strangely disconnected from what's happening to her. How did they think they could beat him?

The floor comes out of nowhere as she slumps lifelessly out of his arms. Looking up she sees him level Tyler with a smug look, his pretty lips smeared with her blood as he smirks. "Now that was definitely worth the calories" he jeers and she has never hated anything more.

She drags herself on her hands and knees out of his invisible prison and Tyler scoops her up and sits her on a chair. He's desperate to help her, his eyes are wild with worry and desperation. "I'll fix this" he promises but his pleas for Klaus to help her fall on deaf ears.

Klaus is petty and childish and just so very ugly to her as he goads Tyler with the half hope that if the younger hybrid will just find the right words, show the proper contrition then maybe he'll share his healing blood. He won't.

There's nothing Tyler can do because it's not Tyler he's trying to hurt. It's not Tyler's betrayal that has wounded him or Tyler's contrition he wants. It's hers and she can't even offer it up because he won't help her anyway and then she'll die with Tyler hating her.

"Get me out of here" she commands without even looking at Tyler, her eyes are riveted to Klaus'. "I can't even look at him" she grinds out without acknowledging the irony that she can't look away. How could he do this to her? She remembers a line from a film, Kill Bill maybe, so vividly she thinks the hallucinations are kicking in early.

 _"_ _Could you do what you did? Of course you could. But I never thought you would, or could, do that to me."_

Back at her place Tyler lays her on the couch and blames himself over and over for this. Then he has the idea of taking her back to Klaus. "We have to try," he insists. "He's got a soft spot for you. If I stay away he might do it"

She really doesn't want to go back, but its either that or explain to Tyler why she's so certain Klaus won't be swayed. Somehow despite the inevitability of her death she still can't bear for Tyler to find out the truth.

Tyler takes her back, lays her inside Klaus' prison and leaves. She wants to ask him again to save her just like the first time she wants to tell him "I don't want to die" and let that be her plea for life but she's absolutely certain he won't and she wants to go with a scrap of her pride remaining.

She's surprised when he lifts her and lays her on the couch with cool businesslike movements that belie the sentimentality of the gesture. Hope sparks faintly in her heart that perhaps if he can't leave her lying on the floor he might

also be unable to watch her die. "If you don't feed me your blood, I'll die."

"Then you'll die," he says in a flat voice that she knows enough to know is a lie. "and Tyler will have learned his lesson the hard way."

"How could you do this to him?" she asks although what reason he has to care about Tyler she can't imagine? "To his mom?" and finally the real question: "To me?"

He doesn't look at her, holds himself steadfastly neutral as he leans against the doorframe, silhouetted and gorgeous and ice cold. "I'm a thousand years old. Call it boredom."

"I don't believe you." She hasn't got time for his bullshit right now and he owes her a little bit of honesty, he has killed her after all.

"Fine. Then maybe it's because I'm pure evil, and I can't help myself." He doesn't move from the doorway but something in the way he says it tells a story, a story of a man who has been told so many times that he is a monster that he would sooner take that name himself, and own it, rather than have anyone else use it against him.

"It's because you were hurt." She has no time for games, she sees him clearly through the fog gathering in her mind. Sees the broken boy behind the ancient monster. She has nothing to lose now so she'll say what she'd never before have dared. "Which means that there is a part of you that is human."

That gets his attention, his head turns slowly to look at her and he moves, as if without volition, so sit beside her. "How could you possibly think that?" he asks, curious and underneath it perhaps hopeful.

"Because I've seen it," she whispers, her voice painful in her throat. She needs him to understand this, to understand why she could have wanted him so badly. Not just because he is handsome, not even a little because he is powerful but because under those disguises she saw a man worth of saving. "Because I've caught myself wishing that I could forget all the horrible things that you have done"

He looks at her and his face is covered in emotion, those human feelings he's so determined to deny. "But you can't," he says quietly and that truth seems to make him hurt but still hope remains and he asks. "Can you?"

"I did" she whispers, her eyes locked on to his, mesmerized by the faintest sparkle of salt water in them. "Once"

He looks so lost, this broken killer, so pitiful, and for once so open that she can't resist one last time trying to save him. "I know that you're in love with me," she forces the words past her failing lips, this is a truth she wants him to hear before she's gone. "And anyone capable of love, is capable of being saved"

He swallows and she can almost feel how tightly he grasps the monster he's determined to remain. "You're hallucinating," he says but his voice is choked and they both know he doesn't believe it.

She feels so sad for him, and for herself. She's not angry anymore just so very sad. "I guess I'll never know" she says and closes her eyes; death is coming and there is nothing left that she can do for either of them.

"Caroline", his voice calls to her across the rising blackness and his arms pull her out of the abyss just before she falls.

The world comes back to her at a single focused point where his blood touches her lips and she latches on to it. His blood, ancient and powerful and healing, fills her throat and the world begins to expand to encompass his wrist and his lean forearm, she grabs it with both hands and sucks ravenously.

He strokes her hair and into it he mumbles, "I'm sorry" so faintly she almost doesn't hear. She uses her returning strength to turn awkwardly in his arms, not withdrawing her fangs from his flesh. Their eyes meet and she gazes at him as she drinks and watches the swirling blue green dance of regret in them.

Finally she released his arm and it goes immediately around her, holding her loosely to him.

'Thank you', she whispers.

"Your welcome" he replies and she lays her head on his chest and lets him stroke her hair.

They stay that way for long minutes, with his fingers running on repeat through the hair at her temple and his rhythmic breathing soothing her. Eventually he speaks. "I thought we were never to speak of it," he says and of course she knows what he's talking about.

She huffs softly and lifts her gaze to his. "Near death dispensation?" She suggest with a small smile.

He doesn't smile back. He frowns and tries to unlock her with his gaze. "Ok" he concedes softly. "But as we're talking about it, just this once, will you be honest with me about something?"

She should really move from his arms she thinks. She should definitely not be honest with him about anything and certainly not about this. "Ok" she echoes.

This is too intimate, his arms are warm and loose around her and her body is relaxed and supple against his. It feels good, better than she wants to admit, more natural and far safer than the embrace of her would be murder should feel.

Later she imagines she will scold herself for not running from this as soon as her legs had the strength. But for now she can do nothing but revel in the feel of him and wait expectantly for his question.

"Why?" He asks simply.

She knew this would be what he would ask and yet still she feels unprepared to answer. "Because I wanted to." She ventures. "I wanted to and I could, so I did"

"Well that's understood love" he says with bare hint of a smirk, "but doesn't really answer the question"

"Because you wanted me I guess. I mean you're all scary and powerful and seriously evil, but you wanted me and you are, you were, different with me. That was kinda..." she takes a moment that feels almost like mourning the loss of that specialness she'd felt back before he made her just another victim. "Kinda irresistible I guess"

Honesty ones tapped flows unchecked from her. "It didn't hurt that you're also super hot and super charming. In a creepy kinda way".

He laughs sadly and touches her face. "I am so sorry love," he murmurs.

She never thought she'd get an apology, let alone two, so she gives him something in return. "Maybe because of the humanity I saw in you"

He chuckles. "Lots of people are human love, I hope you don't scream like that for all of them."

"Urgh" she makes an inarticulate noise of annoyance. "Fine", she bites out nastily. "Maybe I was just curious"

She means that to be an end of it, she doesn't want to discuss this. She wants to brush it off and, like he said, never speak of it again. But his thumb starts to circle on her hip and she's suddenly hyper aware of the hard lines of his body under her and the unmistakable evidence of her effect on him pressing against her stomach. Which should really creep her out but just sparks an answering tingle deep in her belly.

"And was it satisfied?" he asks in low rough voice his eyes which she'd thought would be challenging are wary and unsure. "Your curiosity"

Her lips are dry and she makes the mistake of licking them, drawing his gaze to them and igniting a flare of lust in his eyes.

His eyes find hers again, and for God's sake this man almost killed her today. Almost killed her and saved her again and lost his brother and hurt, he just hurt so much. Her compassion tag teams with her desire and together they out match the anger she should certainly feel.

"No" she whispers, because it's true. She had him yes, felt his desire for her burn over her skin like an inferno, but the body beneath her is still an exquisite mystery to her. He feels hot and lean against her and he thrums with a power she can't deny awakens something primal deep inside. And yet in his eyes she sees that paradox of vulnerability he carries and it is that that keeps her from fleeing.

She drops her head and she hates herself for this. Hates the truth she can't deny, that he has crawled deep beneath her skin and it seems she can't expel him no matter what he does to the people she loves. "No" she says again with all the gravity of a confessional. "It wasn't"

He takes her words as the surrender they are and his hand on her hip pulls her close while the other catches her chin and tilts her face to his. "Caroline?" he gives her one more chance to flee. It's more than she'd expect from a devil like him and she hesitates and closes her eyes against the temptation of him.

She should go. She should get back to Tyler and tell him the wonderful news of her survival. If she were even a halfway decent girlfriend, decent person, she'd already have called him. She finds she's not. She is selfish and weak and the monster in her arms is too compelling to resist.

Her eyes open purposefully and she surges forward, her lips crashing against his. If she is doing this, and it seems she cannot stop herself, then she is determined to not do it by half.

It takes him a second to catch up; clearly the sudden ferocity of her desire surprises him, but he's an opportunist and he isn't about to let this chance pass. He flips them in a flash of vampiric speed and pins her to the couch beneath him as he steadies the frenzied movements off her lips with deep languid kisses.

He won't take her in the wildness of desire, she understands he wants a deeper surrender than that and she offers it up with a moan and the barest prickle of conscience. "Klaus" she speaks his name against his mouth and tells him with that one word what she knows he wants to hear. That she is with him. That knowingly and willingly she is choosing this, choosing him.

"Caroline" his response is breathless and eager and his hands slip beneath her bloodied shirt as her body undulates under his making him moan and grasp at her skin artlessly. The desperation in his touch makes her feel sexy and powerful and she grips him by his hair and tilts his head so she can force her tongue deeper into his mouth.

Her free hand moves between their bodies, already searching eagerly for the fly of his jeans, popping the button and breaking the zipper. She doesn't release him when he tries to break the kiss. She growls in her throat and lets her fangs break through and slice his soft lips. The taste of his blood in her mouth again sends lightening bolts of wanting through her and she can tell by the way he grinds against her that he's just as lost in the storm.

His hands strip off her blouse with a thoughtless tear and her jeans follow without a moment's parting of their lips before he finally breaks the kiss and props himself up on one hand to take her in spread out below him in her mismatched bra and knickers. "God" he mumbles and runs a finger reverently down from her jaw, between her breasts to her naval his eyes following its path. "You are truly exquisite Caroline".

She has no response for that other than to smile disconcertedly, then his gaze lifts to hers again and the naked hunger in it drives all doubt and awkwardness away and she tugs his shirt urgently over his head. Wow, she thinks, tattoos. She hadn't been ready for tattoos. Black birds break free from a single feather on his upper arm and take flight across the flawless skin of his shoulder and on his other arm a panther bears its teeth.

She always did have a thing for tattoos and she takes a second to appreciate just how sexy he is with his sinewy frame, pale skin and black ink. "Wow" she breathes as her eyes come back up to find him watching her ogle him with an expression that is far sweeter than the smirking smugness she'd have expected.

He smiles brief and bashful and then he's kissing up and down her throat and his hands are moving over her body like a sculptor perfecting the curves of his Venus. Every inch of her skin tingles with his touch and she finds herself gasping and writhing beneath him, nonsensical pleas beginning to tumble from her lips.

She has fought with the demon of wanting him so hard since that day in the woods but she hasn't been able to conquer it and now with her hand finding its way inside his jeans to grasp the silken hardness of him she can't help but be grateful for that. He hisses appreciatively against her skin as she begins to stroke him and it's his turn to mutter nonsense into her burning skin.

"Fuck Caroline" he jerks against her when she lets her nails scrape the sensitive skin.

She flips him over, effortlessly trapping his light body beneath her and stripping off his jeans in a single lightening fast movement. He is so beautiful she thinks it's a miracle she has resisted him at all. Reality, Tyler, her friends, the cure, all seem very far away in this moment and as she pushes aside her knickers and lowers herself onto him while his hands clutch at her hips and as she thrills at the sound of his deep lupine growl, she is only very vaguely aware that these things matter to her.

He pushes up into her as she comes down and they both go still for lingering breathless moments just staring into one another, both shaken by the depth of their connection. She comes out of the trance first with a needy moan and her hands settle on his chest as she begins to move above him finding a rhythm that makes his eyes close and his jaw tense.

Her name falls from his lips along with a litany of filthy praise for her beautiful body, her sweet lips, her gorgeous breast when he frees them from her bra and fondles them, and lastly for the tightness of her pussy as she rides him.

His words are half lewdness and half veneration and his touch too is half dominance and half surrender. He is a perfect contradiction and she is taken by the euphoric push and pull of all his different selves.

She throws back her head and quickens her pace and he grunts appreciatively. "God Caroline" he moans suppliantly. She is queen and courtesan to him, angel and whore and the feeling of being everything he wants, for someone like her who never felt like enough for anyone, sends her flying. She comes hard around him with an unladylike grunt and a curse.

With other lovers she's always played a part, struck poses and affected girlish moans and squeals. With him there is no need for such hackneyed theatrics, with him she is her basest self and her freest. She is closer in his arms to the beast she has become than the girl she left behind and it is liberating and terrifying at once.

When she'd thought about this, and honestly after the forest she has thought about it a lot, she imagined that in his own body he would be suave and assertive as he dazzled her with a thousand years of skill. She'd imagined him like Damon, swaggering and conceited. He is not, he is as breathless and eager as a teenager and she thrills that the symmetry of it, that in each others arms neither of them wear any disguises.

"My queen" he gasps and sits up so she's in his lap as her spinning world rights itself and he's pumping up into her and clasping her body to his, his mouth on her full breasts as he takes her.

"Klaus" she keens again as she rides out her orgasm only to feel a second building in her belly.

It's a race for the finish then, the two of them screwing themselves frantically towards heaven and they find it together in a duet of growls and curses.


End file.
